


CADWELL

by AshMontgomery, Plucium



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Future, Galactic, Gen, HFY, Humans, Original Fiction, Original Universe, Outer Space, Posted Elsewhere, Safe For Work, Work In Progress, humanity fuck yeah, science-fiction, space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 18:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16352099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshMontgomery/pseuds/AshMontgomery, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plucium/pseuds/Plucium
Summary: The tale of humanities rise into the galactic community. WIP.





	1. A Rise From a Little Blue Orb

Humanity’s rise to the stars was not the first, the last, the fastest or the slowest. But it was certainly the most interesting. 

 

The rise of humanity as a spacefaring civilisation began on October 4th, 1957 with Sputnik, the first of many satellites that would crowd the space around their homeworld - Earth. From there, things expanded rapidly - Russian Yuri Gagarin was the first human to leave the Earth, spending a mere one-hundred and eight minutes free of the Earth. Only eight short years later, the United States landed two men on Earth’s moon, proceeding to send many more after them, though they spent never more than a few days away from the Earth. 

 

One might ask why they did these things. Many spacefaring civilisations did so either from necessity to save their species from extinction, others did so because their home planet had run out of challenges for them, some were driven out by invaders. 

 

Not the humans. 

 

They did so because of an event they called the Cold War, both sides trying to bring economic and social ruin to the other - and one of the best ways they found to do this was the space race. 

 

Eventually, the United States was victorious, but with the end of the Cold War came the end of the space race. Investment in space slowed, and with it the progression of humanity’s spacefaring technology. Certainly, some progress was still made, but it was slow. Space for humans became the realm of commercial ventures, such as transmitting communications and entertainment, or navigation; cluttering up the orbit with artificial satellites new and old. 

 

It also became the realm of researchers, studying the stars to learn about the world around them, or to search for others like them - a search that was largely fruitless, except for one noticeable incident. 

 

The Wow! Signal, they called it. Some believed it to be contact from another civilisation, others thought it was merely a natural burst of radio waves caused by some interstellar phenomenon. Over time, after a failure to intercept another such transmission, the second group won out, with few still believing it to have come from an extraterrestrial society. 

 

Little did they know they were wrong. It took a long time, but eventually, humanity began to reach out from their little blue orb. The charge to other worlds was lead by the dreams of an eccentric billionaire, Elon Musk, who sent the first colonists to Mars in 2046, starting humanities expansion into the stars. For a while, this satisfied the humans. But before long, they began to look once more to the stars. 

 

Since before the beginning of their spacefaring era, humankind had conceptualised the idea of faster-than-light travel, but the laws of physics continually denied their efforts to ever create such a device. But at last, on 6 November 2135, more than 200 years since the conception of FTL, Dr J. R. Wilson finally bested even the laws of physics, creating humanity’s first working Alcubierre drive. It was tested by Captain Samantha Stafford of the British Navy Spacefaring Division, who became the first human to ever leave the Sol system. 

 

Or so they thought… 

 


	2. A Room of Steel Bars

**18th July 2131, Sol System**

 

Lewis Cadwell was extremely bored. He was in his second week aboard the SMV Athens, with another six weeks remaining before he would finally reach Earth. It turns out there isn’t much to do as a star ship pilot -  in fact, most of the ship was controlled by computers; he was just there as a backup. 

 

That meant he spent nearly all his time doing exactly nothing - he didn’t even have Internet access beyond basic communications, so most modern entertainment was inaccessible. All he had was the music he’d downloaded before he left, a small stash of movies, and a view on the monitors into the endless abyss of space. And his cat Rutherford of course, but then again, all he ever did was sleep. 

 

At this particular moment, Lewis was watching the 2097 reboot of *Iron Man* for what seemed like the fiftieth time on this trip, Rutherford curled up asleep on his lap. He had just got to the bit where everything starts exploding when the emergency alarm and red lighting came on, just as ship began decelerating for no obvious reason. 

 

He picked Rutherford up, placing him on the chair Lewis himself had just vacated, getting little more than a yawn in response from the ever-calm cat. He exited his tiny quarters, heading down the short passageway to the command deck as fast as he could pull himself along in the microgravity. 

 

Strapping himself into the pilot’s seat, he looked at the status monitors in front of him, quickly seeing that the ship was being slowed by an unknown outside force, and that there was exactly nothing he could do about it. Perhaps more worrying was the fact he was also being accelerated on a sideways vector as well as being slowed down. Suddenly the acceleration stopped, then Lewis felt the ship land on something - which should be impossible, he was about thirteen million kilometres from the nearest celestial body. 

 

It was at that moment he heard a crash from the direction of the airlock, and turning to face it he saw a blurry shape, then everything turned to darkness.

* * *

 

Lewis awoke on a hard metal floor. At least that’s what it appeared to be, but it clearly wasn’t on the *Athens*, which was carpeted, and there shouldn’t be any other metal floors for a few million kilometres, and even if there was he certainly shouldn’t be on them.

 

He looked around taking in the room. It was sparsely furnished - to be more exact, it had no furniture at all. The reason why was illustrated by the fact that instead of four walls, it had three blank metal walls, and a wall made of huge steel bars - at least he assumed they were steel - from floor to ceiling, each bar being at least two inches thick. On the other side of the bars was a small area similar to that which he was in, though with the crucial addition of chairs and a table, and a door. He also noticed a small cage made of much smaller steel, inside being Rutherford. How whomever had put them there had managed to get the obstinate cat in the cage was beyond Lewis, so he assumed it had involved some kind of tranquiliser. 

 

Just as he was contemplating cat-caging methods, the door opened, and Lewis finally realised just how much trouble he was in. 

 

The being that entered the room was about five and a half feet tall, but where it was lacking in height, it made up for in bulk. It was bipedal, with four huge arms, easily as thick as Lewis’ leg, and it certainly didn’t seem to lose any maneuverability despite it’s bulk. As far as he could tell, it had no hair of fur of any kind, and wore clothes only on its lower body, showing off an impressive array of scars across its dark grey skinned body. 

 

As if that was bad enough, two more followed it in, bulkier even than the first one; taking up positions on either side of the first one. If nothing else, that bulk probably explained how they got Rutherford in a cage, though he hoped they hadn’t hurt him. This thought was cut off quickly when the first one spoke, and remarkably he could understand it. 

 

“I am Warleader Krasvig, leader of the Fifth Fleet of the Iridus Republic,” it said in a deep, booming voice. “You and your ship have been captured as part of an ongoing research project to aid the war effort.”

 

“What? Please say that again, but slowly.”

 

“I am Warleader Krasvig, leader of the Fifth Fleet of the Kooknqwiere! You and your ship have been captured as part of an ongoing research project to aid the war effort!” Krasvig shouted louder, though not any slower. 

 

“Thanks, that cleared it up a lot,” Lewis replied sarcastically. “Now, what exactly am I supposed to do in this war of yours?” 

 

Suddenly all Lewis could feel was pain. “You will not ask questions without permission!” Krasvig yelled, clearly not appreciating Lewis’ interruptions. 

 

“Alright, alright, calm it down mate. I get the message.”

 

“Good. To see what value you will be to us, we will disassemble your ship, and you will be sent to our research ship for testing. As for that - he pointed to Rutherford - it presents no value to us, and will be put down to conserve resources,” Krasvig explained. 

 

“Back up a bit - you’ll do what now?” Lewis exclaimed. 

 

“We will kill the creature, as it has no value to us,” Krasvig said in response. 

 

“If you do that, I will not participate in any tests,” Lews replied with more confidence than he felt. “He’s my only friend - I don’t think I’d cope without him.” 

 

“This seems strange. Surely you would be fine without it - it’s not even of your own species.” 

 

“I don’t think you heard. I’m not going to participate in anything you want me to without Rutherford.” 

 

Krasvig considered this for a moment before replying, “You may keep the creature, although if you do not cooperate we will not hesitate to kill it.” 

 

At that moment, a message came over some kind of intercom system, though this one was not translated, and as such sounded similar to German, though decidedly alien. Krasvig turned to the Iridian on his left, speaking in the same language I had heard over the intercom, then he left, taking with him the Iridian on his right. 

 

Not knowing it’s real name, Lewis decided to call the remaining Iridian ‘Arny,’ in reference to that actor from those old films, since it seemed to suit him. ‘Arny’ walked over to Rutherford’s cage, and picked it up with not a hint of effort, despite the fact it was made from copious amounts of steel, proceeding to carry it to one edge of the steel bar wall of Lewis’ cell, waiting for a moment as the bars retracted into the floor and ceiling. He then placed the cage in the cell, unlocking it, then exiting, bars moving back into place behind him. Without looking at back once, he exited the room, leaving Lewis alone with Rutherford, whom he promptly released from his cage. 

 

Leaning back against one of the solid walls, Rutherford again curled up on his lap, Lewis began to contemplate exactly what the hell was going on. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CADWELL was originally published on r/HFY on Reddit.
> 
> CADWELL is © Ash Montgomery, aka AshMontgomery, ashcritech. Some rights are reserved: The copyright holder reserves all commercial rights and ownership of this intellectual property. Permission is given for other parties to share, redistribute and copy this work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0International License. Derivative works set in the universe of this work are permitted, though they will not be considered to be canon unless otherwise stated otherwise by the author.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally published on r/HFY on Reddit. 
> 
> This work is © Ash Montgomery, aka AshMontgomery, ashcritech. Some rights are reserved: The copyright holder reserves all commercial rights and ownership of this intellectual property. Permission is given for other parties to share, redistribute and copy this work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0International License. Derivative works set in the universe of this work are permitted, though they will not be considered to be canon unless otherwise stated otherwise by the author.


End file.
